A Greater Love
by The Perpetual Lurker
Summary: In Crystal Tokyo, amid the Christmas Eve festivities, Usagi faces a decision that will affect her future and the future of everyone who depends on her. Winning fic for the Winter Fanfic Challenge.


"A Greater Love"

It was Christmas Eve and Usagi felt alone.

The room behind her was filled with all the cheer and warmth of a Christmas gathering. Soft piano carols played from an album that Makoto had put on, while a Yule log crackled in the fireplace at one end of the large, cozy room. Chibiusa was trying with great persistence to attach a red and white Santa Claus hat to Mamoru's head, but his efforts at dodging had the girl laughing too hard to mount any real offensive. A pile of gaily wrapped presents sat under the green Christmas tree, just waiting to be opened in the morning. All the people Usagi felt closest to were in this room; but even with the strength of their love and friendship surrounding her, the white and grey blur of snow falling against the darkness outside suited her mood more closely than anything else.

She leaned against the window, feeling the chill from the blizzard seeping through the glass pane. There should have been lights down below, glowing in the little village that they still laughably referred to as "Crystal Tokyo." There should have been candles, and strings of colored bulbs, and streetlamps shining to illuminate the passage of friends and families visiting each other, but Usagi knew that even without the interference of the driving snow, there would be nothing visible. The power systems to the houses had largely failed - again - and all the people below would have retreated to a large community center for protection from the storm. They were celebrating their own Christmas in the one place where heat was still available. The population of Crystal Tokyo was not large. And the snows never stopped.

"Merry Christmas, Ser- I mean, Usagi." Makoto held out a mug of cocoa by way of apology. "Sorry; here you go."

Usagi accepted the hot drink with a forgiving nod. It was the one thing she insisted on every Christmas, her only self-indulgence. For just once each year, only on this night, she would put aside the facade of Serenity like an uncomfortable mask and just be herself. Tomorrow would bring its own problems when she resumed the crown and scepter, but tonight she didn't have to think about them unless she wanted to.

She'd realized during her first battle as Sailor Moon that accepting Luna's locket might cost her life, and had long ago accepted the possibility of death. She'd never dreamed that her role could be so different from what she had imagined, and still so demanding even after all this time.

The weight of gazes from around the room startled Usagi; she realized that everyone was watching her. She forced a smile to her face and raised the mug in a toast. "Merry Christmas, everyone."

"Merry Christmas!" echoed back to her, and the conversations began again. She left the window, coming to sit by Mamoru - not Endymion, never on Christmas Eve - and lean against his shoulder. He reached an arm around to circle her waist contentedly.

"Glad you came to join us." Rei smiled at her. "Cookie?"

"Thanks." Usagi took one from the offered plate. She had been trying to join the company, but she found herself drifting away from the conversation and into her own thoughts again. The conditions outside bothered her more than she would admit to anyone around her.

The Ginzuishou was supposed to be able to restore the Earth, cleansing it from the impurities that had attracted all the enemies she'd fought in the past. Over the past hundreds of years, Usagi had spent the bulk of her time as Neo-Queen Serenity trying to fight the storms and bring healing. Through her efforts, bolstered by Ami's research and the assistance of the other senshi, they had managed to recover a small group of citizens and reclaim some of the land around the palace. It could hardly be considered an overwhelming success, as evidenced by the snowfall outside that had only just begun to slow. Food was grown indoors under heat lamps and in greenhouses designed to make the most efficient use of what little sunlight filtered through the cloud cover. Electricity came from a large field of wind turbines - that energy source, at least, was in plentiful supply. Usagi supposed she ought to be glad that they were making some sort of progress toward reconstructing a society, but could still feel nothing in herself but a quiet sort of desperation.

For all the drain on her energy and soul that the work took, it seemed as if they were never any closer to reclaiming the Earth. Sometimes Usagi wondered if the ice were not fighting back somehow to keep its land. The senshi were always hopeful, and yet Usagi had the feeling that they were keeping information from her. On her own, though, she thought she might have figured out what it was they were hiding. It was time to discover how close her conjectures were, and how determined her friends were to protect her.

"Did you ever wonder about the beginnings of Christmas?" she said abruptly into a lull in the discussion. "They believed it was the birth of a god."

"Not a god," corrected their resident spiritualist. Rei crossed her legs and leaned back into her comfortable chair. "I think it was the son of a king, the child of a god."

It had been so many, many years since any of them had even thought about the subject, but the others all leaned in a little closer to the conversation. Usagi searched her husband's face for a hint of deeper understanding there, but he seemed unaware of the subtle undercurrents. Of course, it would be difficult for one of them to keep a secret from the other; it was very possible that the senshi had failed to tell him anything about their speculations.

"That's right... and he was supposed to save the world from death?"

"From sin," Minako put in suddenly. "And he died for it-" She fell silent then, recognition and remorse flashing in her eyes before she purposefully smiled and reached for another cookie. "But that's an old superstition."

The expression on the faces of the other senshi only confirmed Usagi's suspicion. Even Chibiusa in her pre-adolescent haze had noticed something serious in the discussion going on just over her head… but Usagi did her best to pretend that she had failed to recognize any but the most superficial of meanings.

They had all been awake for far too long with their talking and laughing. But finally, as Chibiusa yawned and insisted she didn't need to sleep at all, really she didn't, everyone slowly wandered off to their own bedrooms. Mamoru paused at the door to the nearly-empty room, realizing that his wife had failed to follow along.

"Aren't you coming to bed, Usako?"

"I've had too much sugar, I guess. I don't think I could sleep just yet..." She smiled in the same way everyone had been doing all night: to head off suspicion, to pretend everything was fine. Usagi wondered if she were fooling any of them better than they had tried to fool her. "You go ahead."

He nodded and disappeared through the door. Usagi waited just a few more moments, then moved down the hall to the archival room. All the salvaged manuscripts they had found were stored there, more in hopes of usefulness than actual results. She smiled at the thought of what her old teacher would say if she knew Usagi was voluntarily going to research anything, but then her smile faded. Of course, Haruna-sensei was gone, too. Another casualty of the Earth's rebellion against its human occupants.

She quickly found the book she was looking for: a collection of verses and myths about the king's-son they had talked about. She didn't study it so much as skim it, unsure of exactly what she was looking for. There was a story about a man who argued with God to save a city for the sake of the pure souls living there, and one about an ordinary shepherd who became a king - she could feel a kinship with that boy. She read on and on, sitting on the floor among the shelves of dusty, rarely-disturbed tomes, flipping through pages at random as the night became early, early morning, until her attention was caught by one line. "Greater love hath no man than this..."

Usagi stopped then, resting the book on her lap. For all their work against it, the frozen wasteland outside the boundaries of Crystal Tokyo remained unaffected by any attempts to restore it to a natural cycle of seasons. The constant use of the Ginzushou to keep what they had already recovered at a manageable level was exhausting, but Ami insisted that her research would find a way to rescue the rest of the Earth without resorting to more drastic means. Usagi had been willing to postpone any overt discussion, but had long suspected that what might be needed was a greater outlay of energy than any of them had wanted to risk.

It was one thing to offer her life in defense of humanity; it was quite another to face this constant living death, trapped in the guise of Serenity for hundreds of years without the nature of a ruler. This was her only night to truly feel alive, to be someone besides a daughter-ghost of the Moon Kingdom. Who knew how many hundreds of years it would take before the Earth could heal itself, with no assistance? And every one of those days during every one of those years, she would be trapped in the palace – and there would be people frozen under the ice, waiting for salvation. It was high time everyone – in Crystal Tokyo and out of it - left their crystalline prisons.

She held the book steady with one hand and tore the page out with the other.

When Endymion woke the next morning, the mattress was cold beside him. Usagi had never come to bed. He quickly dressed and went into the hallway outside, only to find each of the senshi sticking their heads out through their bedroom doorways, whispering to each other. Something in the air was different; a new sound, a new scent, something almost indiscernible. None of them had yet heard from the Queen.

Small Lady wandered from her bedroom, her hair in a pillow-induced tangle. "G'morning, Merry Christmas," she said blearily, rubbing her eyes. "Do we get presents now?"

"Soon, honey. We'll have presents soon, but first, have you seen your mother this morning?" Endymion asked carefully, wishing not to trouble his daughter until they knew where Serenity was.

"Nuh-huh. Not yet," the girl answered, quickly discarding the question in favor of a new concern. "Hey, what's that noise, anyway?"

They all fell silent, listening. Sailor Jupiter was the first to recognize the sound that none of them had heard in so long. "It's water! Something's dripping outside!" She ran back to the window in her bedroom and pushed the thick curtains back, crowded by everyone else who had followed.

Tiny rivulets of water ran down the windowpane, runoff from the snow overhead. The sound of ice slowly cracking and melting could now be clearly heard. A few heartbeats later, the entire group was headed to the huge front doors of the palace building.

"I don't understand," said Sailor Mercury as she pushed the door open and was the first one outside. "How could all this have happened overnight?" Her voice trailed off as she caught sight of the figure lying in the snow. She stood still with shock as Sailor Mars and Sailor Venus pushed past her in their rush to reach the Queen, Endymion right behind them. She caught Small Lady's shoulder, holding her close. "Wait, just wait a minute," she said in a voice carefully controlled, more calm than her feelings should have allowed.

The Queen - no, it was Usagi. As Endymion approached, he saw that she was still in her simple dress from the night before, not the elaborate gown that she wore every other day of the year. Beyond that, something in her face was more peaceful, less burdened, as she lay with her eyes closed. Usagi's arms were stretched straight out to each side, her fists closed tight. All around her body, green spears were poking through the rapidly melting snow: the first signs of spring grass after centuries of winter.

A light, fresh breeze danced playfully around them, bringing a crisp scent of water and a new season's beginning. As Small Lady broke from Sailor Mercury's grasp to run to her father's side, he reached out carefully to open Usagi's left hand, then her right. In one, Endymion found the Ginzuishou, a cold and darkened lump of crystal. His tears blended with the drops of melting ice from the tree branches above as he slowly handed it to Chibiusa. In the other hand, Usagi held a scrap of paper. Mamoru unfolded it to see a blur of wet and running ink, the words indistinguishable.

It was Christmas morning, and the entire world was crying.


End file.
